Horse Isle 3 Hints

12-30-23

Latest update: Exploring the Sky Lands – image of Magical Pitcher/Magic Nectar

Horse Isle 3: Infinite Wilds is most definitely not a game I created, but I was a beta tester for it and it’s one of my all time favorite games.   HI3 is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before and is practically tailor made for me!

HI3 is a nearly infinite world, fully 3-D rendered, and is centered on exploring a vast new land, building an awesome ranch, joining a club, catching wild horses, breeding them, and much more.  Since musical instruments exist, you can even form a band!  I’d love to see a bunch of bagpipers play in-game.  You can also take photos, watch wildlife, dive into the ocean, do quests, and play games.  How infinite is the map?  Well, it’s one MILLION kilometers across.  That’s like walking around the Earth twenty-five times.  Since you can save locations and teleport back to them, you can get around pretty well, and there’s literally always something to explore and something new to see.  Please see below for my ever growing guide, as well as more remarks about the game.

Horse Isle will work on Windows 64 and 32 bit, Mac, and Linux.   

It’s free to play, and perfectly possible to succeed without a subscription (which I love) though you do get lots of benefits when you subscribe.  Subscriptions are $5 a month or $40 a year, and you can often buy enough in-game “Mobia” to subscribe from other players.  See my “Making Money” guide for some help with that.

Interested in joining? 

Click  HERE or go to the HI3 site and put in my user ID, 1023.   Whenever you buy your first subscription, you’ll be rewarded with 10 Esroh Essence (good for more energy) and 1000 gold dust to help you along!

Guide: Getting Started

Guide: Ranches

Ranch Updates

Guide: Catching Horses

Guide: Making Money

Guide: Making Tack

Guide: Making Dyes

Guide: Club Basics

Guide: Tack Imbuement

Guide: Essence Anomalies

Guide: Finding Nightshade

Guide: Rare Items

Guide: Photography

Guide: Sailing

Guide: Ballooning

Guide:  Hang Gliders

Guide: Travel in Ice and Snow

Guide: Extreme Sports

Guide: Sticky Situations

Guide: Caves

Update: Epics

Update: Caves

Update: Underwater Adventures

Update: Exploring the Sky Lands

Update: Chariots and Jousting

Update: Animal Shapeshifting

Update: Horse Barbers

Update: Horse Affinities, Wandering and Lead Ropes

Update: Ocean Life

Advanced Tips

Continuing Adventures

The Unwritten Rules

Update:  Ranch and Club Buildings

I have listed the most useful posts above.  Yet, there is more on this site.  You can search “Horse Isle 3” on the blog or click the “Horse Isle 3” category to see every post.

Basics of the Game

The Horse Isle 3 game world may look a little less detailed and polished than some MMOs, keep in mind how huge the map is.   There are plans to improve textures, add more things like birds, caverns and weather, and vastly increase the things players can do.

Updates are frequent and the creators are highly involved with players and listen frequently to suggestions and concerns.

Horses

First of all, there are plenty of horses.  Draft horses, ponies, riding horses, minis, and breeds you’ve never heard of.  As you travel you will find singletons, pairs, and even small herds.  Unlike in previous Horse Isle versions, a wild horse will look pretty much the same as it will when you own it.  So you can look from afar, decide whether or not you want to catch a horse, and just ride on if its not your type.  I really love that aspect of things.  They are all unique too, as they are randomly generated, and so you’ll never find two horses perfectly alike – not even twins!

Horses differ depending on their habitat.  If you want a horse with good stamina, go to the desert.  If you want a big horse, go to snowy areas.  And so on!  There’s a guide to where you can find different types in the library, and on the horse isle main site in the help files.

Another part of the game that I truly enjoy is that you will almost never find a purebred horse in the wild.  You can find coldbloods, warmbloods, grades, that kind of thing, but usually the only purebred horses are the ones you special order.  However, it’s possible to create various breeds by paying attention to their genetics, and the various horse colors are determined by the most realistic genetics system I’ve ever seen or heard of.  That’s great for avid breeders, though things are still pretty simple for the novice.  Basically it’s as simple or complex as you want it to be.

Lucky Finds

1 in 250 wild horses is a Lucky Find.  If you catch one, you’ll see a notification pop up.  You need to have the horse identified, still, but it’ll be a 0% purebred of some breed, usually with pretty decent stats.

Horse Behavior

The horses behave in a pretty realistic way.  You’ll see ear pinning and swiveling, horses looking at you, tossing their head, resting a leg, grazing, etc.   If you get too close they will run away, or if you chase them around too many times they will get tired of you and run really far away, so no one can find them at all.

Other things to do

You can gather all kinds of items from the different areas of the world and make things with them.   If you want tack for your horse, for example, you either need to gather the things to make it, or buy the tack from another player.   There is so much space that nobody need feel crowded, yet there are plenty of places to go and interact with people if you want to.  This world is what you make of it and I really love that.

You can also explore something like 25 different biomes.  You can gather materials and build a huge ranch.  You can also work with others and build club towns.  You can build massive competition courses across all kinds of terrain and run those, or compete in them.  You can also do minigames that are scattered throughout the world, like word scrambles, color sorting, rock stacking, and such.  You can also grow food, make horse treats and feed, and use them or sell them to other players.  You can group with other players and do ride alongs, have water balloon fights, and even deliver the mail!  In the future there will be quests to complete and plans are in the works to have massive cave systems to explore, as well as diving and skiing.

Back to the horses

No two horses are alike.  They all have different personalities that affect how they interact with you, how fast they are, how hard they pull, how brave or skittish they are, and more.  All sizes of horse can be found, too, and there are pretty much infinite color variations.  For example, if you need a brave pony for crossing ice, you can find one, or if you need a nice fast racehorse for crossing ground quickly you can find one.Below I have placed pictures of Ravenwing, my prize Thoroughbred mare who can run nearly twenty miles an hour,  and FeatherFoot, my 21 hand Shire cross who isn’t so fast but can plow through snowdrifts like a champ.  Both have great bravery scores so they don’t spook too badly unless you try to ride them off a cliff or into water.

It’s pretty easy to see how slender and racer-like Ravenwing is, and how massive FeatherFoot is.   I enjoy them both.  They need daily care – feeding, watering, grooming and petting.  They both enjoy treats but like different ones.  I can ride with them, jump them, enter competitions.  I bred FeatherFoot by crossing her mother with a huge stallion someone was offering up for stud, and she’s a big girl but steady, good for riding through heavy snowdrifts.  She pulls like a champ, too.

Basic tips for beginners:

Collect glowing balls (essence) as much as you can.  Here is what they look like, and there’s a different type for each Biome.

You can use them to trade for equipment, like a grooming brush, lasso, torch, and even things like a kayak and musical instruments.

The first thing you should probably get is a lasso, so you can catch a wild horse, and after that it’s a good idea to get a grooming brush.   Both are pretty cheap.

You don’t need to buy buckets at first because you can just Place your horse in shallow water and they’ll drink, and Place them in a grassy area to graze.

Travel: Don’t try to get more than one horse at first, it’ll just be frustrating.  Do what you can to either make or buy tack, look for it at player shops before you build a ranch.  You can ride bareback, by the way, but you’ll fall off a lot.  Luckily, just walking isn’t that slow, and you can also swim, even across oceans.

The Beginner Bird guide has a lot of good hints so take the time to read them.

Feeding/Watering Horses: If you want to bring along water for your horses without buying a bunch of buckets, pick coconuts – they can drink from those and also are fed a certain amount from them.  It’s a lot cheaper than using the Ostler’s service in the towns.

Even though it’s tempting, don’t be in a hurry to buy a ranch.  Take your time Traveling to different areas of the world.  A good way to do that is to use Quick Travel to go to where different Clubs are, that way you can see all kinds of places.   Then when you have a lot of Essence saved up, and know some good places to cut wood and gather stone, you can pick the perfect parcel – by the way, you get a whole hectare for each parcel!    Nobody else can gather in or around your Ranch, which is nice if you want to keep it looking pristine.

Building Materials: If you want a faster way to gather stones, find a beach with a bunch of rocks on it, and slowly ride your horse across it while hitting E repeatedly.  This will automatically gather things that are near you, and you can gather stones surprisingly fast.  The same tip works great if you are riding through a thick forest.  I really like forests of Lodgepole Pines for this, though palm trees on beaches are good for it too.  Both use up less energy when cutting them down.  You are able to carry 500 of each to start with.

Curious about the Biomes?  Here is a list of them.  They are all unique and very cool.  This list is copied from the above mentioned site and is probably not complete.  If you join the game, you can get lists of all the plants to be found by reading the help files or checking out a library in one of the Clubs.

Biome: DECAY
Climate: Cold, Arid
Sub-biomes: Tar Pits, Fumarole Mountains (rare), Dark Decay Spires

Biome: SALT FLATS
Climate: Cold, Semi-Arid
Sub-biomes: Pink salt pools, Mauve Saltlands (rare)

Biome: TUNDRA
Climate: Cold, moderate
Sub-biomes: Moraines

Biome: SNOW
Climate: Cold, humid
Sub-biomes: Snowy Mountains, Snow Ghosts, Winter Wonderland (rare)

Biome: ICE
Climate: Cold, wet
Sub-biomes: Ice Spires, Spiral Mountains

Biome: BLACK SAND
Climate: Cool, Arid
Sub-biomes: Fire and Ice, Dragon Grass

Biome: MESA
Climate: Cool, Semi-Arid
Sub-biomes: High, fertile Valleys.

Biome: TAIGA
Climate: Cool, moderate
Sub-biomes: Red Larch Forests, Taiga Marshes

Biome: ALPINE
Climate: Cool, Humid
Sub-biomes: None yet

Biome: FJORDS
Climate: Cool, Wet
Sub-biomes: Forests, Cliffs (can find cool outcroppings and waterfalls here!)

Biome: STONE FOREST
Climate: Temperate, Arid

Biome: BADLANDS
Climate: Temperate, Semi-Arid
Sub-biomes: Flat Shorelines, Canyonlands

Biome: PLAINS
Climate: Temperate, Moderate
Sub-biomes: Dry River Beds

Biome: DARK FOREST
Climate: Temperate, Humid (downright foggy!)
Sub-biomes: Rusty River Cliffs (pretty hard to climb!), Dark Drumlins, Ancient Gravestones

Biome: RAINFOREST
Climate: Temperate, Wet
Sub-biomes: Lavender Shores, Sitka Rain Forest, Driftwood Shores

Biome: SANDSTONE
Climate: Warm, Arid
Sub-biomes: Gravel Beaches, Hills, Saguaro Forests

Biome: SAVANNA
Climate: Warm, Semi-Arid
Sub-biomes: Chocolate Mountains

Biome: FALL FOREST
Climate: Warm, Moderate
Sub-biomes: Mountains, Magical Forest (has a spring theme)

Biome: BAMBOO FOREST
Climate: Warm, Humid
Sub-biomes: Bamboo Groves, Rainbow Eucalyptus, Beaver-chewed stumps

Biome: SWAMP
Climate: Warm, Wet
Sub-biomes: Turtle Mountains

Biome: DESERT
Climate: Hot, Arid
Sub-biomes: Fertile Oases (both true and false!)

Biome: MEDITERRANEAN
Climate: Hot, semi-arid
Sub-biomes: Inland Seas, Tide Pools, Almond Isles (rare)

Biome: WONDERLAND
Climate: Hot, Moderate
Sub-biomes: Candy Mountains, Wondershrooms, Giant Flowers

Biome: JUNGLE
Climate: Hot, Humid
Sub-biomes: Deep Jungle, Open Jungle

Biome: VOLCANIC
Climate: Hot, Wet
Sub-biomes: Geysers (Hot Springs), Volcanoes (actual calderas are rare!) Atolls (rare)

Out in the middle of the ocean you can sometimes find beautiful atolls with white, sandy beaches, palm trees, and hills.  There are different kinds of seaweed to be found and it’s quite beautiful.   There’s also prime diving around them.  Here’s a picture.  Several clubs are located in them.